* * * * *

  Amazed at once and comforted, to find
  A boundless power so infinitely kind,
  The soul contending to that light to fly
  From her dark cell, we practise how to die,
  Employing thus the poet’s winged art
  To reach this love, and grave it in our heart. 
  Joy so complete, so solid, and severe,
  Would leave no place for meaner pleasures there: 
  Pale they would look, as stars that must be gone
  When from the east the rising sun comes on.

* * * * *

To that and some other poems he adds the following—­a kind of epilogue.

  ON THE FOREGOING DIVINE POEMS.

  When we for age could neither read nor write,
  The subject made us able to indite: 
  The soul with nobler resolutions decked,
  The body stooping, does herself erect: 
  No mortal parts are requisite to raise
  Her that unbodied can her Maker praise. 
  The seas are quiet when the winds give o’er: 
  So calm are we when passions are no more;
  For then we know how vain it was to boast
  Of fleeting things, so certain to be lost. 
  Clouds of affection from our younger eyes passion.
  Conceal that emptiness which age descries.

  The soul’s dark cottage, battered and decayed,
  Lets in new light, through chinks that time has made: 
  Stronger by weakness, wiser men become,
  As they draw near to their eternal home. 
  Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view
  That stand upon the threshold of the new.

It would be a poor victory where age was the sole conqueror.  But I doubt if age ever gains the victory alone.  Let Waller, however, have this praise:  his song soars with his subject.  It is a true praise.  There are men who write well until they try the noble, and then they fare like the falling star, which, when sought where it fell, is, according to an old fancy, discovered a poor jelly.

Sir Thomas Brown, a physician, whose prose writings are as peculiar as they are valuable, was of the same age as Waller.  He partakes to a considerable degree of the mysticism which was so much followed in his day, only in his case it influences his literature most—­his mode of utterance more than his mode of thought.  His True Christian Morals is a very valuable book, notwithstanding the obscurity that sometimes arises in that, as in all his writings, from his fondness for Latin words.  The following fine hymn occurs in his Religio Medici, in which he gives an account of his opinions.  I am not aware of anything else that he has published in verse, though he must probably have written more to be able to write this so well.  It occurs in the midst of prose, as the prayer he says every night before he yields to the death of sleep.  I follow it with the succeeding sentence of the prose.